The It Girl(85)

“Truthfully, I didn’t. I would never say that to anyone else but you. But I didn’t think she was a particularly nice person, and she certainly wasn’t good for Will—she made him absolutely miserable that last term. I do get why everyone else fell for her. She was so funny, and she could be incredibly sweet when she wanted to. But some of her antics were pretty cruel. Think about what she did to Emily.”

“What she did to Emily?” Hannah echoes, puzzled. “I don’t think she did anything to Emily, did she?”

“Didn’t you know?” Hugh frowns, and then his expression changes. “Ah, no, it would have been right before… well. Right before.”

He doesn’t need to spell it out. Hannah knows what he means.

“What did she do?” she asks.

“It was another letter one,” Hugh says, a little reluctantly. “Similar to the Nokia one she pulled on me. Only this time she pretended…” He takes a breath. “She pretended that Emily’s A-level results had been called into question. She wrote this letter—it was very convincing, Emily showed it to me. It was on headed paper and everything, I have no idea how April made it look so good. These days it would be a cinch, of course, with scanner apps on everyone’s phone, but back then, she must have worked quite hard to make it look official. It said it was from the exam board and that Emily’s answers had been found to correspond very closely with another girl’s at her school. It basically accused Emily of either cheating or feeding another student the answers.”

“Wow.” Hannah is taken aback. That really is cruel. She can see what Hugh means. It’s not even funny. Most of April’s jokes had at least a slight twist of humor to them, even if it didn’t seem that way to the recipient. But this… this just seems horrible. “How did Emily react?”

“Well, I only found out about it afterwards, so I’m not sure. But… I mean, you know Emily.”

Hannah nods slowly. She does indeed know Emily. And all of a sudden it comes to her, a memory as sharp and clear as a voice hissing in her ear—Emily, walking past the chapel on a frosty November evening, her voice ringing out as cold as the night air: If she tries any of that shit with me, I will end her.

“How did Emily find out?” Hannah says. “That it was a hoax, I mean?”

“The letter asked her to call a number at the exam board and talk to one of their examiners. So Emily rang up and from what she said, she was completely taken in at first, but then something tipped her off—I think she heard something on April’s end that made her twig that the caller was at the college, a bell chiming or something. And she realized. She said April didn’t even apologize, just laughed idiotically and said it was Emily’s fault for being so stuck up and pleased with her own intellect. And then she hung up.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Hannah puts her hand to her face. Suddenly so many things make sense. Sorry. Work. Of course Emily didn’t come to April’s after-party. She must have been sitting in her room fuming and trying to figure out what to do. What would she have done?

I will end her.

Go to the college authorities? Complain to a tutor?

Whatever it was, she didn’t have time to act. Unless…

The thought comes unbidden, rushing in like chill sea water racing up a beach to soak you unexpectedly.

Unless she did.

But Hannah pushes that away. It’s ridiculous. Emily might have had a grudge against April, but she wouldn’t kill her, would she?

“Why would April do that?” she says, now looking up at Hugh, almost pleading with him for answers. “Why would she do something so horrible to Emily?”

“Well…” Hugh says slowly. “I might be wrong but I’ve always wondered… I think perhaps April had given Ryan an ultimatum, and it didn’t go the way she thought it would.”

“You mean…”

“I don’t know,” Hugh says, very gently. He puts out his hand and takes Hannah’s. “But… the way you and Will felt about each other, towards the end it was… well, it wasn’t obvious exactly, but I don’t think you had to be Freud to see it. And April was nothing if not good at reading people.”

Hannah goes hot, and then cold.

“You mean you knew? April knew?”

“I don’t think she knew anything. But I think there was a hell of a lot of tension that last week. And I think maybe April had already decided to cut her losses with Will and move on. But Ryan…”

“But Ryan wouldn’t play ball,” Hannah says slowly. “Because although he’d been messing around with April, he loved Emily.”

“It’s the only reason I can think of,” Hugh says with a shrug. “Why she would have been so frankly horrible to Emily. I mean, there wasn’t a lot of love lost between them, but there wasn’t much actual animosity. But that last prank—that smacked of real hate.”

Hannah says nothing. She is sitting there, chewing on her lip, trying to count back. As far as she can recall, Emily was perfectly civil to April in the week running up to the party. Which means she probably didn’t get the letter until Saturday morning. If it was in her pigeonhole on the morning of the party, then April must have posted it the day before, and she must have taken a few days before that to write it and mock up the headed paper. Which means that on Monday, when they were all at the theater, supporting April for her first night, raising glasses and smiling and telling each other how awesome April was, April herself was probably already planning this.